When you need space, power and bandwidth and an ideal data center to house your servers, there are certain aspects you should consider while researching colocation hosting providers. Get informed in order to make the smart decision for optimal server uptime, security and service.

An Ideal Location

You need an ideal location for server colocation – if you’re concerned about uptime and server safety at all, you’ll need to find a data center located in a geographic region with minimal risk of natural disasters and overheating.

Michigan Colocation Offers Cool Climate

Data center efficiency also helps reduce operational costs. Facebook recently built one of their data centers near the Arctic Circle to take advantage of a climate that offers natural cooling resources. Michigan colocation is also ideal for its low risk of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, natural disasters, as well as its long winters – only four months have temperatures that average over 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

24×7 Technical Support

To ensure your servers are up and running, you need unlimited and responsive 24×7 technical support from a team of certified, experienced engineers. Managed server monitoring is also important to alert your staff and your colocation hosting provider staff of any potential server issues. Your colocation provider should also offer a troubleshooting and remediation service to identify root causes of any problems and for quick resolution.

Full Redundancy

A colocation facility with redundant Internet service providers (ISPs), uninterruptible power, and a well-designed network infrastructure will provide a quality environment to ensure a high level of uptime. Choosing a data center with multiple ISPs allows for automatic failover between providers should one provider be unavailable for any reason. N+1 power with UPS, battery and generator power systems can help protect your servers against outages and power spikes to avoid service disruptions.

Security

SSAE 16 & SOC Audited Colocation

Ask your colocation hosting provider if they’re SAS 70, Type II and SSAE 16 audited, and if they have a SOC 2 or SOC 3 report. This is a good indicator that your provider has the standardized processes and procedures to protect your data. If you need a PCI compliant environment (for customer credit cardholder data) or HIPAA compliant hosting (for patient health information), then you also need to ask your provider if they have the appropriate technology and procedures in place to meet compliance standards.

Ask if your provider has been audited to meet compliance by an auditor to protect against a potential data breach, requiring the use of firewalls, IDS (Intrusion Detection System), IPS (Intrusion Protection System), physical and logical security, etc.

Easily Scalable

Choose a provider that makes it easy for you to add more servers and services, like bandwidth. If your company suddenly needs room to grow, make sure your colocation hosting provider has the sufficient space, resources and business longevity to support your company’s future needs.

Server Transparency

For easy access and visibility into the status of your servers, your colocation hosting provider should have some type of remote server monitoring system to allow you to login and check your Internet bandwidth, order forms, support tickets, CPU usage, and other information to help keep your servers running optimally. This type of monitoring system allows you to have more control over your servers even if you can’t be at the data centers as well as access to your hosting provider’s tech team for their support.